I had a dream last night. An annoying, recurring dream. Different characters, same plot.
I'm in a play - last night it was The Sound of Music - and I'm woefully ill-prepared. I know none of my lines and the curtain is about to rise. My fellow actors think I'm joking or that it's just a spectacular case of stage fright, but they don't understand that I truly don't know a single word. In most of these dreams I'm pretty sure I haven't even seen the script, let alone read it.
They carry on completely unaware of the true nature of my panic, and I desperately ransack the backstage area looking for a script that I can somehow tuck into my costume and read from while I'm on stage. Allegedly acting.
I never actually get to the stage. I wake up searching for a script and worrying that I don't have single clue what I'm doing. That I'm going to ruin everything for everyone and look like a collosal fool in the process.
I would like to think that these dreams that see me ill-prepared for a scripted performance mean that I'm living my life day by day, not obsessing about the future, not trying to orchestrate things that are simply beyond my control.
But from my state of panic in these stress-ridden dreams, I know this is not the case.
I think instead they're reflecting my anxiety at feeling like I'm the only one who doesn't seem to know what the hell is going on. Kind of ever.
I'm watching other organized lives around me as they follow the plans they made and somehow managed to stick to, fate and happenstance aside. And there's no way I can keep up with them. There's no way I can be as prepared or as calm or as sure as they are.
I've lost my script.
Goddamn it, I've lost my script.
5 comments:
This sounds so similar to a recurring dream I have had - that I am in university but know absolutely nothing about my degree subject, not even where the classes are held, yet it's already the second term, and I am therefore sure to fail all my exams and I just had this "you are a dud and it's all your own fault" feeling in the dream. To me it was clear that it represented a massive loss of self-confidence.
(((Kristin))). I hope you find your script again - even if it is revised.
But what would you do when you hit the stage? Perhaps you'd turn to the audience and let them in on the secret and start your own one woman show? Perhaps you'd let them in on the terror and angst of flying scriptless. Perhaps you'd tuck them in your pocket and dazzle them with wit and wisdom. Perhaps.
I wish I could locate that damn script for you.
DinoD
I have the same kind of dream as Rosepetal. I am supposed to take a final exam and know nothing about the course and can't find my notes and books. I have that dream all the time.
If you did get to the stage, I bet you would find that everyone else is winging it too.
At what point do you wake up? When I have a recurring nightmare, I usually wake up at the most frightening part (doesn't everyone?). But when i realize that "it's that dream again" I go back to sleep with the intention of finishing or facing whatever it was I was I was afraid of. Sometimes I'm able to curb my dream into a positive, but I have to be able to finish the dream, otherwise the nightmare comes back again. Also, if my altered dream takes a turn for the worse, I try to wake up & change it again until it's resolved or better.
Weird, I know... *lol!
Next time you have the dream and wake from it, see if you can change it so you're the star of the stage!
I just read your blog from the top hence reading your post "The New Me" before this one. And in that order, this dream seems pretty clear. The stage being the you that you put up for others, the script being "the new you" (and what the hell is that? How do we even know if we have finished shedding the "old" with its 30 year history)
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I've certainly been panic striken because I have no idea who I am becoming. All I see is the loss of my old self along with the loss of everything else.
Where is that script indeed?
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